How do you make a dairy-free diet appealing for a 2 yr-old? Paediatric dietitian, Dave Swain, has some words of advice.

Raisingkids member's problem
My 2 yr-old has IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). She has to have a dairy-free diet but dislikes most things she's able to eat. Her diet lacks variety and so she gets bored with it easily.

Please could you suggest some dairy-free foods she may like as I've run out of ideas and fear she isn't eating properly!

Dave's advice
My first bit of advice would be to get a referral to a State Registered Paediatric Dietitian if you haven't already. You can do this via your GP, or Paediatric Doctor, if your daughter has been referred to a specialist. They'll be able to give you milk-free diet sheets, see if your daughter's having enough calcium in her diet and generally review her growth and macro and micronutrient intakes.

One thing you can do straight away is contact your local supermarket and ask for a list of all their milk-free manufactured products. You can also contact food companies, who will send you lists of their own milk-free products. This is the only way to ensure that a foodstuff is milk-free and you'll find there are a number of products suitable for your daughter - for instance, a number of plain chocolate bars don't contain milk!Following a milk-free diet shouldn't be too restrictive, however you do need to look at labels for hidden dairy products.

Products that need to be avoided include:

• All types of milk
  (... skimmed, semi-skimmed, evaporated and condensed)
• Milk powder
• Milk solids
• Non-fat milk solids
• Cream
• Yoghurt
• Artificial cream
• Butter and margarine
• Lactose
• Whey and hydrolysed whey protein
• Casein and hydrolysed casein
• Caseinate

Products that are suitable include:

• Soya milk, rice milk and oat milk
  (... try and get the calcium-fortified variety if possible and speak to a dietitian to see if your daughter needs a calcium supplement)
• Some soya cheese
  (... but check label as most varieties contain casein)
• Dairy-free or soya margarines
  (e.g. Pure, Vitaquell, Granose or supermarket 'own' brands of soya margarine)
• Soya yoghurt
  (e.g. Granose, Yofu or Provamel)
• Dairy-free ice-creamand s>oya ice-cream
• Fresh meat
  (... sausages, beefburgers, ham and other processed meat often contains milk)
• Fresh fish
• Fresh fruit and vegetables
• Pure fruit juice and fruit squash
• Most breads, and breakfast cereals
  (e.g. Weetabix, Shredded Wheat, Cornflakes, Branflakes, and Ready Brek, plus porridge andrice)
• Plain (i.e. not stuffed) pasta
• Sugar, honey,treacle and carob
• Plain chocolate and soya chocolate
  (... but check the label)
• Most plain crisps
• Jelly

NB Keep up-to-date with ingredients
Manufacturers regularly change the ingredients of products and thus you need to send off for new milk-free food lists on a regular basis. At time of writing, all the above products were milk-free, however this may not be the case if ingredients are changed.

To conclude, following a milk-free diet need not be too limiting and a dietitian will be able to give you recipes and literature to help. It may take time to know which foods are milk free but with the lists from the supermarkets, shopping should be made easier.

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